Creating and Editing Reporting Data Sources

Use

You create reporting data sources to specify the process context data you want to report on. You can create a reporting data source either by using the process context to generate automatically data source fields, or by defining the data source fields manually. Apart from the fields created using one of the options, the following predefined fields are created for each reporting data source:

Field Name	Description	Type
PROCESS_ID	Process instance unique ID	VARCHAR
OCCURRENCE_D	Date of occurrence	DATE
OCCURRENCE_T	Time of occurrence	TIME
OCCURRENCE	Time of occurrence in milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT	BIGINT

You can apply filters to predefined fields as follows:

Date range filter (BETWEEN operator) for the date field OCCURRENCE_D

Example
OCCURENCE_D = 3/25/10 - 3/26/10

The date format depends on your locale. The single or multiple values operator is not supported for dates. If you want to filter for a specific day, you have to set a range with the day date as min and max boundary, such as 1/1/10 - 1/1/10.
Single (EQUALS) value filter for the field PROCESS_ID and for the fields with types boolean, byte, short and string.

Example
ASTRING = RED

You can edit an existing reporting data source by adding or removing fields in the table. Editing the reporting data source changes its version.

Prerequisites

You have opened the Process Development perspective in the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio and have expanded your project in Project Explorer view.

To be able to create a reporting data source using the process context, you have to create the following objects first:

Data object

Data objects in the process form the process context. For more information, see Creating Data Objects and Process Context .
Reporting activity

For reporting activities you can use the following simple data types: Boolean, byte, date, dateTime, decimal, double, float, integer, long, short, string, time.

Cardinality greater than 1 is not supported.

You can define complex data types, however at runtime they are changed to simple data types. An error is displayed at runtime if conversion to a simple data type is not possible.

For more information, see Modeling Reporting Activities

Procedure

Creating a Reporting Data Source Using the Process Context

In the modeling surface, choose a reporting activity.
In the Properties view, open the Reporting tab page.
From the Data Source Name dropdown list, select New...
In the dialog that appears, specify a name for the reporting data source in the Name field and optionally a description in the Documentation field. Choose the Next pushbutton.

Note
The reporting data source name must not exceed 14 characters and must not contain spaces. Reporting data sources provided by one vendor must have unique names. For each deployed reporting data source version, a BW data source is provided which is named using the following pattern: <reportingDataSourcename>_<timestamp in format yyMMddHHmmssSSS>. The timestamp marks the moment when the reporting data source version is saved in UTC time zone.
Select the process context attributes you want to have as fields in the reporting data source. Choose the Finish pushbutton.

The reporting data source is created and assigned to the reporting activity. You can also find the reporting data source you created in Project Explorer view, when you expand the Process Modeling node and then the Reporting Data Sources node.

The necessary input data mapping from the process context to the reporting data source is created automatically for the reporting activity. You can check the mapping when you open the Input Mapping tab page in the Properties view of the reporting activity which references the reporting data source you created.

Creating a Reporting Data Source without the Process Context

Expand the Process Modeling node.
In the context menu of the Reporting Data Sources node, choose New Reporting Data Source... .
In the dialog that appears, specify a name for the reporting data source in the Name field and optionally a description in the Documentation field. Choose the Finish pushbutton.

The reporting data source is created and opens for editing. You have to define the necessary fields for reporting manually.
Choose the Add pushbutton under Reporting Fields to add a reporting field.

A reporting field is added with a predefined name and string set as a type.
(Optional) Click the string type in the Type field to activate the dropdown menu and select another type for the reporting field.
(Optional) Click the reporting field name in the Name field to rename the reporting field. Reporting field names in one and the same reporting data source must be unique and must not exceed 16 characters.

Repeat the above steps to add all the necessary reporting fields.
Save your changes.

Editing a Reporting Data Source

Expand the Process Modeling node, then expand the Reporting Data Sources node.
In the context menu of a reporting data source, choose Open .

The reporting data source opens for editing. You can edit the reporting fields and rename the reporting data source.

Note
If you have referenced a reporting data source from a reporting activity, you can open the referenced reporting data source for editing from the reporting activity. To do that, open the Reporting tab page in the Properties view of the reporting activity and click Data Source Name .

Editing Reporting Fields

Choose the Add or Remove pushbutton under Reporting Fields to add or remove a reporting field.
Click the type in the Type field to activate the dropdown menu and select another type for the reporting field.

Renaming a Reporting Data Source

Choose the Rename... pushbutton under General Information .
In the dialog that appears, enter a new name for the reporting data source in the New Name field and choose the Finish pushbutton.

Note
You can choose the Preview pushbutton to check which reporting activities reference the reporting data source you rename.